


Yes, I Am Ill, Cannot Get My Balance

by glasgowbones



Series: Vertigo [2]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: (don't worry he gets better), (it's mainly holding off a panic attack), A-spec Dirk Gently, Angst, But anyway this is mainly just sad nighttime longing, Demisexual Dirk Gently, M/M, Masturbation, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Panic Attacks, Pining, Read the opening notes for further warnings, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and the implication of holistic accidental mutual masturbation, implied mutual pining, oh and
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 05:17:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21010367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasgowbones/pseuds/glasgowbones
Summary: It's bad enough that Dirk is hopelessly in love with his best friend. It's worse that he can't stop thinking about the time they lay together in a hotel bed because they both got shot by time travelling lawnmower salesmen. Probably worse than "worse." Probably very creepy. Probably catastrophic.Written as a companion piece togallantrejoinder'sGive Me Love, Give Me Vertigo.





	Yes, I Am Ill, Cannot Get My Balance

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Give Me Love, Give Me Vertigo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20861927) by [gallantrejoinder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallantrejoinder/pseuds/gallantrejoinder). 

> Content warnings for:  
Discussions of temporary paralysis and non-consensual drugging as in gallantrejoinder's original fic, though with more focus on the sensations of the paralysis.  
References to/Mild discussion of holding back a panic attack (successfully).  
Some references to feelings of internalised homophobia and aphobia.
> 
> Title from the lyrics of "O Vertigo" by Kate Miller-Heidke.
> 
> As this is a companion piece rather than a sequel to gallantrejoinder's _Give Me Love, Give Me Vertigo_, they can be read in either order. However, I would recommend starting with _Give Me Love_.

It’s quite possible that, in regards to his experiences of attraction, Dirk has more left to work through than he previously thought. He really should know better by now – do better, _be_ better – but he’s well into adulthood and still he doesn’t have it all quite figured out. He thought he did; he really, really thought that whole … business was a fully finished puzzle. He had found all the pieces, put them together, and marked it all as one complete picture. Or so he thought.

And then he met Todd Brotzman. And he fell horribly, terribly, wonderfully arse-over-teakettle, right-off-the-Cliffs-of-Admiration-into-the-River-of-Affection-and-straight-down-the-Waterfall-of-Adoration in love with Todd Brotzman. And Todd Brotzman did not fall in love with Dirk Gently.

And that was okay. Really, it was – truly. Mostly. Dirk knows that Todd loves him, just as Farah loves him, and Mona loves him – Dirk is _loved_, and isn’t that beautiful, isn’t that amazing, can’t that please, please be _enough_?

Can’t Dirk’s inside-out, upside-down brain just be satisfied with that? Ever since he can remember, Dirk has craved love the way a land stricken with drought craves the rain. And now he has love, and with it has come new cravings, new puzzle pieces – and suddenly he’s looking at the picture again and realising, oh, oh okay, that’s new, I think maybe I had this upside-down, or inside-out, or … Oh _fuck_.

Dirk has discovered hungers he’s only ever glimpsed hints of before, and they threaten to overwhelm him. Where before he felt like the drought-stricken, love-starved land, now he feels like the raindrop waiting in the cloud, always threatening to spill over, always hungry to let itself plummet to the ground spread below it, beautiful and inviting and – strictly off-limits.

The raindrop _must_ stay in the cloud, Dirk tells himself sternly. The raindrop needs to behave, or the raindrop will quite possibly spoil the best thing the raindrop has ever gotten to keep. The raindrop is too impetuous and flighty; the raindrop needs, for once in its life, to abide by the rules and not go charging out of bounds on whims and urges and desires.

And yes, alright, maybe in the moments when they’re alone together, on quiet afternoons in the flat – or those breakthrough moments in a case where the whole world fades away and they may as well be alone – maybe Dirk meets Todd’s eyes and wants very much to fall into them. But he’s allowed to _want_ to fall, he’s decided. Perhaps even let himself teeter on the edge, feeling the urge to jump pressing like a warm weight in the pit of his stomach. As long as he doesn’t actually do it.

Dirk is very good at all kinds of metaphorical tightrope-walking, he knows this by now. However, the Universe, utter bastard-bitch that it is, could at least lend him a hand at not toppling to his unrequited doom, by laying off the more painful coincidences.

Case in point: quite literally a case – the one they’re on right now, the one which had gotten off to a promising start, continued on down an avenue of increasing interest, and just two nights previously had done a real hairpin-bend turn around the revelation that fairies are real and perfectly capable of international drug trafficking if they put their minds to it. Really good stuff, honestly, a nice genre twist which they haven’t indulged in since Wendimoor – no, the fairies are really brilliant. It’s the abrupt and unpleasant yank to the right which the case has just taken in the last fifteen minutes that has Dirk wondering whether if he climbed up on the roof and shouted loud enough at the night sky, maybe the Universe would hear him and _cut this out_.

Things had begun to kick off in a deceptively routine way: searching the hotel room of some lackeys, hearing the sounds of said lackeys approaching, and promptly panicking in a search for a hiding place. Usual stuff, usual suspects. Todd had seized Dirk by the hand, pulled him into the bathroom, and dithered about by the door visibly going through his flight-or-fight response while Dirk climbed into the curtained shower-bath, which was a fairly tried-and-true hiding spot during case-related home-invasions. A moment later Todd had come tumbling in after him, having apparently decided on ‘flight’ – and had tripped spectacularly over the rim of the bath, landing chest-to-chest with Dirk, hands planted on the tiles on either side of his head.

That’s not the unpleasant part. That had been quite enjoyable, really, up until Dirk’s idiot mouth had made some stupid quip about their ‘first-time’ hiding in a shower-bath and Todd had gone red in the face and pulled away. That had been painful, though no less than any other time Todd pulled away whenever Dirk got too close to falling. Even what had happened next hadn’t been that bad – though it’s always alarming to have one’s hiding spot be rumbled, especially by drug smuggling old-timey fairy lackeys, and then to have to watch one’s best-friend-assistant-unrequited-love be shot with a tranquiliser and think, “_oh bugger, they’re gonna do me next, aren’t they?_”

No, all okay. No real complaints from Dirk Gently to the administration of causality until then. It’s what happens after, when Dirk lying slumped in the bath-tub, completely paralysed and yet completely aware, listening to the lackeys bickering whether or not to kill them. Things get unpleasant then, because Dirk is trying very, very hard not to have a panic attack.

Usually Dirk loves any opportunity to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations – in fact he considers it one of life’s little pleasures – but he barely even catches the bit where the fairy drug smugglers admit to being time-travelling lawn-mower salesmen in their frenzied argument over how to handle the two prone bodies they’ve suddenly found themselves with. Usually, too, Dirk might even jump up, say, “Oh, hello! Always nice to meet a fellow experience-ee of time travel! 1843, you said? Don’t suppose you know a little boy called Zackariah Webb?” But now is not usually, and Dirk cannot move, Dirk cannot even open his eyes; Dirk can barely think for all the terror gripping his chest.

He feels suspended, in the most awful way possible. Frozen, yet limp at the same time, and awash with a sick feeling of vertigo utterly unlike the one he usually enjoys when he meets Todd’s eyes. He doesn’t know why it’s so terrifying. He’s being stupid, surely – it’s not like this is awakening any horrible memory. They never did anything like this to him in Blackwing, and Dirk’s even been semi-paralysed before. But never like this, so perfectly balanced on the knife edge between awareness and unconsciousness. The fact that he feels so alert yet is incapable of movement is so deeply wrong, it sets off every siren in his brain.

He wonders, in a moment of horror, whether this is how a pararibulitis attack can feel, and he wants to scream out for Todd.

So that’s all … fucking horrible. But it's par for the course, still, re: awful things Dirk has endured to do the work he does and live the life he loves. The paralysis is awful, but not quite the bit that makes Dirk want to yell on his roof in the middle of the night. That part comes next, after Dirk feels hands clumsily picking him up and carrying him out of the bathroom.

The time travellers seem to have decided on some sort of plan, but Dirk wasn’t listening. All he knows is he’s being touched, and that it’s very unpleasant and he wants to kick and bite and run – then he’s deposited on a soft surface. A bed. There’s a presence next to him that Dirk immediately recognises as Todd, and for a brief moment his relief clouds out the horror and the panic. Then he’s lifted again, shifted, and it happens: the beginning of the long, extended part of the day where Dirk makes a mental note to cuss out the Universe next chance he gets, and in the meantime settles for thinking, very vehemently, “_Oh, I hope the absolute fuck not_.”

His fears are entirely founded. The time travellers are … arranging him and Todd into some sort of parody of an embrace. From their whispered conversation, they seem to think it will arouse less suspicion and put off anyone who stumbles upon Dirk and Todd lying there in the hotel room before the lackeys can get away properly. Dirk has missed why and how they reached _that_ stellar conclusion, but he’s not exactly in a position to voice his criticisms; no, he’s too busy being manhandled _into_ position.

It’s … excruciating. Their fumbling, bumbling hands manoeuvring Dirk about like a puppet, rolling him onto Todd and off again, rearranging their limbs, their clothes – the lackeys have the nerve not only to loosen Dirk’s tie and take off his shoes, but they actually remove his jacket. There’s nothing remotely lascivious or even all that malicious about the act, but Dirk is filled with indignant outrage that someone else is taking off his jacket and it isn’t even Todd.

The lackeys are going about this all wrong. They arrange Dirk lying on top of Todd, mussed but still almost fully dressed, his arms around Todd and his face buried in Todd’s neck. Dirk objects to that; if he and Todd were actually doing this, for starters Dirk would be the one underneath with his legs spread, and they’d both be missing more clothes. Dirk is open to anything, of course, and strict roles of topping and bottoming have always been lost on him, but he’s thought about this enough to know that in this kind of position, at least, he’d want Todd to be the one in charge – because, admittedly, usually Dirk is the one ordering him about.

These are dangerous thoughts to be having, particularly while pressed up against Todd, and usually Dirk would never allow them. But focusing on the outrage, on the sense of ‘no, _no_, you’re not even setting up this scene correctly, you absolute _pillocks_,’ is good. It drowns out everything else for a bit; the humiliation, the worry, the panic still thrumming underneath it all. Dirk’s anger lasts until the lackeys depart and he hears the door closes behind them. Then, in the heavy silence that descends with the final click of the door lock, Dirk finds himself adrift and terrified once again.

The horrible feeling of vertigo is back, and his head spins, and even though he’s lying down Dirk feels as though he’s teetering back and forth – like he’s just put his foot out, and found nothing but empty air underneath it, but instead of the swoop and the eventual jolt, he’s just trapped in one long, unmoving moment of horror. He strains to move, to twitch his fingers at least, or open his eyes, but nothing responds.

The panic is becoming too much, and Dirk is beginning to fear finding out what might happen if his gag reflex still works while his mouth can’t open. He knows he has to find some anchor, something that can calm him down, but all he has is the body he’s trapped in and the total silence of Todd’s unmoving form beneath him. And Dirk suddenly has a spike of terror at the thought that maybe he’s too heavy, maybe he’s crushing Todd – what if the weight of Dirk so fully on top of him for such a long time triggers an attack? What if Todd is already having an attack, and Dirk just can’t tell because Todd is also trapped and unable to scream?

That makes Dirk freeze up internally. He knows that were his body capable of it, he’d probably be shaking right now, and usually when he shakes and hyperventilates and starts to spin out, Todd is the one to hold onto him until his brain stops spinning. But Todd can’t, and maybe Todd needs his help right now and Dirk can’t help him and – and Dirk has to calm himself down. He can do that, for himself. He did it before he met Todd.

Not entirely true, Dirk’s brain used to tear itself to pieces sometimes with its own screaming, but Dirk is made of stronger stuff than most people seem to think, and he survived it. He can survive this. And if nothing else, at least Todd is here – and Dirk knows, he _knows_ that were Todd able to move or even speak, he would be trying to hold onto Dirk and tell him everything was going to be alright.

And Todd is, in a way, holding onto him. His hands have been arranged low on Dirk’s hips. Dirk can feel the steady rise and fall of Todd’s chest beneath him, and the warmth of Todd’s neck against his cheek. Even if Dirk has no idea what’s going on inside it, Todd’s body is as solid and as real as Todd himself always is, and Dirk does his best to ground himself with that presence. He pushes away fears about pararibulitis attacks, the embarrassment of the entire situation, the panic, and focuses on the pace of Todd’s breathing and just how deeply … constant Todd feels, the way everything about him feels and smells like home.

Dirk lets himself lean, just a little, into the sensations of having Todd underneath him, and the moment his figurative foot slips on the ledge, he goes tumbling.

Dirk’s sensory experience of the world around him has always been, to an almost detrimental degree, intense. He’s accustomed to getting lost in music, the softness of flower petals, shafts of light dappling through water into abstract shapes and colours. Todd has always been the one thing that Dirk very quickly realised he must be very, _very_ careful not to lose himself in. But here they are, lying together, and Dirk can feel every place Todd’s skin touches his. He can feel the gentle weight of Todd’s hands, and for a guilty second, he wishes that the lackeys had thought to lift his shirt up so that Todd’s hands could be on his bare skin. Dirk’s own hands are at least arranged one at Todd’s side, and one loosely crumpled near Todd’s jaw, but it’s a unique kind of torture, having his hand that close to cupping Todd’s face without actually making contact. Far worse is the feeling of having his lips pressed into Todd’s neck, just above the collar of his shirt, and not being able to kiss – or to pull away – but knowing now how it feels to have his lips to Todd’s skin. Knowing how it feels to have Todd’s legs open underneath him, the way Todd’s hip-bones feel when they press into him.

The moment he allows his brain to notice these things, it runs wild with memorising every single sensation with a voracity that Dirk just knows is going to prove self-destructive. Dirk tries to draw back, but he’s enveloped in Todd and now he’s never going to be able to forget how it feels. Stupid Dirk, stupid Dirk’s brain, stupid Universe for doing this to all of them. Dirk didn’t _need_ this, it was already hard enough; he was already too hungry and he’s already fallen too far. He’s already made an idiot of himself trying to flirt a hundred times, already trailed off in the middle of sentences, staring at Todd’s smile. He’s spent enough nights lying awake, wrapped in thoughts of Todd, and trying with all his might to ignore the heat simmering guiltily in the pit of his stomach.

Dirk hasn’t always been able to ignore it. Most of his fantasies about Todd are the romantic kind; afternoon kisses, sharing food, cuddling on the couch, and the simple idea of Todd loving him back. Sometimes they can get … heated, yes, and there’s one scene involving a darkened alleyway, a lot of adrenalin, and Todd exploring Dirk’s mouth with his tongue which Dirk returns to a lot. Until the last few months, that had been the extent of his daydreams and his guilt. But then, somehow, those new, bewildering puzzle pieces had begun to emerge, and suddenly Dirk Gently wasn’t only in love with Todd Brotzman, he wanted Todd Brotzman in ways he’d never really wanted anyone.

Dirk has always felt alienated by the thought of sex with another person, and hadn’t at all enjoyed his previous attempts to explore those particular fields of experience, but now he wants so badly for Todd to touch him. He wants to touch Todd, feel Todd holding him, not just holding onto him. He wants to feel what it would be like to pull each other close, divest themselves of shoes, jackets, shirts, jeans, and underwear, layer by layer until they can press together just like this, but with nothing left between them. Dirk wants to give himself to Todd every way possible, fast and slow, gentle and rough; he wants to give up holding all of this love inside him and give it to Todd willingly. He wants Todd to take whatever he wants from Dirk, because Dirk is so, so hungry to give it to him and no one else, and because Todd taking what he wanted would mean he _wanted_. That he wanted _Dirk_.

And now Dirk has new knowledge, and a brand-new hunger has come with it. Ever since his sexual feelings for Todd awoke, Dirk has been mostly lost in the thought of Todd taking care of him, making love to him, and the idea of Todd being confident, taking control and still managing to be heartrendingly gentle, because that’s so very Todd. And perhaps Dirk disapproved of the lackeys’ choice of scene-setting before, but now it occurs to him … there’s definitely something to be said for it.

In theory, in a world where they could move just a little, and Todd didn’t want to push Dirk off and refuse to make eye contact with him for 24 hours, Dirk wouldn’t be at all put out at having to lie on top of Todd for an extended period of time. If Todd wanted him back, Dirk would definitely want to try this; Dirk’s hand cupping Todd’s jaw, Dirk’s face buried in Todd’s neck, Todd’s hands on Dirk’s hips. Todd holding him, rubbing his back, telling him everything was going to be alright. Todd would take care of him, and tell Dirk he loved him, and when their full autonomy was back, to thank Todd for all his hard work, Dirk would fuck him until he forgot how to think.

The heady weight of that more pleasant vertigo is clouding Dirk’s brain, but through it he thinks, “_Oh. Alright. Well, that’s the first time I’ve thought about fucking Todd senseless_.” There’s a thrill shooting through him, guilt hot on its heels, and Dirk is the raindrop, straining against the confines of the cloud – he swears he can almost hear the thunder brewing as the atmospheric pressure is turned up three notches at once.

Then he realises, no, that’s not thunder – that’s Farah kicking down the door.

* * *

From what Dirk can tell in his still-paralysed, embarrassingly ‘_whoops I turned myself on mid-case_’ state, Farah seems to think that both Todd and Dirk are dead when she first finds them. It’s actually quite touching, because it sounds like she starts crying, but also Dirk doesn’t want Farah to cry and hearing her cry makes him want to cry, and well, at least that takes care of the stirrings of arousal in his stomach very abruptly. She pushes Dirk off Todd and onto his back, and as soon as she finds their pulses she calms down and switches to her Determined-Heavy-Lifting-Badass Mode, albeit a somewhat sniffly version of it. Exactly how she gets them both downstairs, out of the hotel, and to the hospital remains one of life’s little ‘How Is Farah Black So Unstoppable’ mysteries, but from the thudding and the rumbling Dirk would guess it involved the timely theft of a luggage rack and the full use of all the skills Farah gained from her weekly weight-training classes.

Farah is certainly the one to carry them one by one into the emergency room, from where there is an instant flurry of activity – doctors, nurses, all scrambling to get Todd and Dirk onto stretchers. She chatters to the two of them endlessly throughout the entire process, hoping aloud that she’s doing the right thing, updating them on every step of the process in a rambling, disjointed way that betrays just how nervous she is, and never once acknowledging the fact that she’d found them lying on top of one another, looking like they’d passed out five minutes into foreplay.

When Dirk is able to open his eyes, he’s at first blinded by the harsh neon lights overhead. They’ve put him in a bed by this point, and through a gap in the curtains he can see Farah talking to someone in blue scrubs. It’s only some fifteen minutes later, when Dirk is actually able to turn his head, that he sees that Todd is in the bed next to his – and he’s already looking at Dirk. His eyes dart away quickly, and Dirk feels a pang of foreboding.

Much, much later, after rigorous tests and a lot of tedious waiting, Farah asks on the drive home, “… Were you guys … okay? I mean, when I found you –”

Todd makes a strangled noise, cutting her off, and she doesn’t raise the topic again.

The case continues, and Dirk throws himself into it as hard as he can. It’s another spot of time travel, which is usually fun, but it reminds him too much of his and Todd’s first case. Though of course, that probably wouldn’t sting at all if it weren’t for the way Todd keeps bouncing back and forth between avoiding all eye contact – as Dirk predicted – and … staring at him for long periods of time, which Dirk did not predict at all. At least, Dirk _thinks_ Todd is staring at him; he keeps catching Todd looking at him, and the colour that springs to Todd’s cheeks when he looks away seems guilty somehow. But it’s very possible that Dirk is just projecting, because he’s had a lot to feel guilty about lately.

For one thing, Farah is clearly worried about Dirk. It starts the night they get back from the hospital; when Todd escapes immediately to his bedroom, Farah seizes Dirk by the arm before he can do the same. She asks him if everything is okay. Dirk lies through his teeth that everything is fine, nothing to worry about, why is Farah asking?

Farah sees right through it. She keeps cornering him throughout the case; at first asking him again, “Is everything okay?” When Dirk is evasively reassuring, she adds more pointedly, “Is everything okay with you and Todd?” Dirk evades those questions too, and eventually Farah is resorting to pouncing on him whenever Todd leaves the room and asking him outright what the hell is going on, did something happen between them, did she interrupt something, is there anything she can do to make it better? It’s clear that she’s coming from the same place Dirk was when he heard her crying – she wants him to be okay, because she cares about him.

But ‘_you didn’t interrupt anything, some lackeys arranged us like that because the Universe wanted to play a cruel practical joke on me and I fell for it like a patsy because I’m pathetically in love with Todd_’ is too embarrassing for even Dirk to confess. More than that, he really, really doesn’t want to talk about it, because talking about it means thinking about it, and he’s certainly already doing far too much of that.

That’s the other thing, obviously. He cannot stop thinking about being that close to Todd. He tries not to think about it, he really does, but as the week and the case both draw to a close, all he can think about is Todd pressed underneath him, almost as close as physically possible and still hopelessly out of bounds. Now he knows how Todd feels, how Todd’s hands feel on him, and he can’t erase the memories from his head. Dirk isn’t entirely sure he wants to erase them, and that’s probably worse. Dirk is awful, he’s being awful and lecherous and – and all these _feelings_, they were bad enough before and now they’re almost unbearable. Soon the case is all wrapped up, and once it’s gone Dirk has nothing to throw himself into, and he’s back to falling. The storm that began to brew in that hotel room only grows, and one night, a week after the close of the case, lightning strikes.

It starts out like this: a memory, or sort-of memory, of him and Todd lying in the hotel bed in each other’s arms. Farah isn’t coming in, Dirk knows this. He and Todd have to wait for the drug to wear off on their own, but it’s not even a little bit terrifying, because Dirk can feel that Todd loves him. At first it’s just a _knowledge_, a quiet certainty that hangs in the air, and it keeps Dirk grounded. Instead of that horrible feeling of prolonged suspension, he’s tied by a string to the reassuring anchor of Todd’s heart. Then Todd’s hand begins to move.

Just his pinky finger, at first, and Dirk can tell that Todd is slowly getting the feeling back in his hand. Dirk still can’t move, he’s a few steps behind, but that’s okay. Todd is here. Todd is regaining the use of his fingers, then his hand, then his arm, and the first thing he does is run his hand soothingly down Dirk’s side. His presence is all-encompassing; gentle, sweet, apologetic, protective all at once.

And with patience, Dirk feels life come back to his own hands. The sickly, deadened feeling starts to fade, and as soon as he can move enough to do so he pulls Todd closer. He wraps his arms tighter around Todd, presses himself into Todd because he can, because he wants to and he’s allowed to. He can feel Todd wanting him back.

As more movement comes back to them both, Dirk begins to catch up. He puts his hand to Todd’s face, so very gently, and traces the line of Todd’s jaw with his thumb. He tilts Todd’s head back, exposing his neck, and then Dirk presses his face there properly. He kisses Todd’s neck languidly at first – they’re both still slow-moving. But soon Todd is guiding Dirk to lie higher on him, pulling him up by the hips, and Dirk is hanging over him, his lips above Todd’s lips, ready to fall. And when he does, Todd meets him with the same hunger, opens his mouth, and takes Dirk’s kiss like a drowning man.

That’s the moment when Dirk knows he must be dreaming. The vision shatters, everything splinters into muddied confusion, and Dirk wakes up in his bed, disoriented and warm all over. It takes a few minutes for his arousal-addled brain to sort through what just happened, but when he does, it’s with a sinking sensation that Dirk realises it’s the middle of the night, he just got woken up by an erotic dream about his best friend, and he’s almost painfully hard.

Close behind that pack of newly realised information comes the knowledge that this is going to be one of the times Dirk won’t be able to ignore it. Part of him doesn’t want to ignore it – he feels an echo of the same thrill he got when fucking Todd first occurred to him, but at the same time he feels stricken with guilt and shame. Both are drowned out by the heat pooling between his legs and the vivid array of images still lingering in his mind, as well as the knowledge that the shower is next to Todd’s room, and the pipes are far too noisy to take care of this situation with a blast of cold water.

Dirk throws his sheets back enough to uncover all but his legs. He’s already too warm, and as he reaches beneath his sleeping clothes and wraps one hand around his cock, another thrill of heat rushes through his stomach.

The dream has done most of the work for him. Dirk is already leaking precum, and he already knows which fantasy he wants to take himself through tonight. He lets himself fall, heart-thudding, into the thought of pressing himself against Todd, and Todd only pulling him closer. He thinks of having Todd pinned down in his bed, _this_ bed, and leading him through kiss after kiss after kiss, just the way Dirk leads him through cases. Fast and excited and _follow-me-follow-me_, and Todd matching his speed with fervour, overtaking him at moments and then pulling back to almost relinquish control. Dirk imagines that this isn’t their first time, that they’ve been together for so long that Dirk can guess without asking what Todd wants tonight – that he can just _know_, and not get it wrong.

Dirk’s stomach tenses with anticipation, and he forces himself to slow down, just enough to savour this indulgence before the awareness of how much he’ll probably regret it can come crashing through the haze of aching love and arousal. He strokes himself slowly as he imagines guiding Todd’s thighs apart, and seeing Todd react. And Todd would react, not strongly, not loudly – not yet – but he might bite his lip, flush with colour. There would be something lovely about coaxing reactions out of Todd, drawing him out bit by bit and knowing that he wouldn’t show them to anyone else.

That’s a detail Dirk often gets stuck on, and it’s one that makes his heart hurt far too much – he has to re-focus. He imagines moving between Todd’s legs, pressing closer just to tease him, letting Todd feel the hard shape of his cock. Maybe Todd would press down on him, wanting him inside already – being the impatient, over-eager one, for a change. Dirk, for once, would hold back. He would take a moment just to look Todd over, to take in the image of Todd spread open and ready and wanting underneath him. So, so beautiful.

Dirk’s heart stings, but oh, he knows Todd would be beautiful. Dirk doesn’t draw back from the pain; he imagines Todd’s sigh as Dirk finally enters him. He imagines Todd looking up at him, their eyes meeting, knowing without anything said aloud that Todd loves him, wants him; that Dirk means everything to him, that Dirk has given him gifts to match everything Todd has brought to Dirk’s life. And yes, it hurts, it hurts a lot – but this is Dirk’s fantasy, and it would hurt so much more to imagine Todd letting Dirk fuck him without love and friendship being at all involved.

And Dirk does imagine fucking Todd. He strokes himself slowly, at first, to match the pace he imagines pushing into Todd, pulling almost completely out again. He would want to go slowly, then build, just the way the storm inside him has built – he would want to fuck Todd without hurrying, not get too lost in the sensations just yet and watch Todd enjoy it, crave more. Dirk would wait until Todd started to press himself down again, trying to ride Dirk’s cock faster – or until he outright told Dirk he wanted more. Then he would push into Todd faster, gather speed and rhythm and listen to Todd begin to pant, and swear, and moan Dirk’s name.

Dirk would drink it all in, every moment of it. He would take in every facial expression, every whispered, broken half-sentence, everything about the way Todd looked and sounded while being fucked – Dirk would immerse himself in it the way he immerses himself in every other part of life that overwhelms him with delight and joy and excitement. And he lets himself imagine that Todd would feel the same way, that Todd would cup Dirk’s face and pull him down and into a kiss just because he wanted Dirk closer even when Dirk was already inside him.

Dirk doesn’t really have extensive experience of sex, certainly nothing like this. He’s not sure that what he’s imagining is anywhere approaching what reality would be like, and he’s sure that reality would find some way to be embarrassing and strange in ways he couldn’t possibly anticipate. He’s heard, read, seen, and even tried enough to know that sex can be incredibly silly, and Dirk knows that sex involving him would definitely be a bit ridiculous, but he finds he really doesn’t mind when it comes to Todd – when it comes to being close to him, taking care of him in a way no one else could, just making him feel good. Dirk would want more than anything to make Todd feel good.

Except that’s not entirely true, is it? Dirk would want, first and foremost, to make Todd Brotzman feel loved. He would want Todd to know that he was _loved_, that Dirk was going to look after him the way that Todd always looks after everyone else. Dirk would want to tell Todd just how good he is, even if he struggles to believe it still; Dirk would want Todd to know just how worthy he is of being loved by someone, even if that someone isn’t Dirk.

But in Dirk’s fantasy, Todd only wants Dirk. Todd tells him so, openly, his eyes locked on Dirk’s as they intertwine in Dirk’s bed, and Dirk loses track of everything but the need to drive into Todd harder and faster. Still Todd pulls him closer, pulls him down until their foreheads press together, his lips bare inches away as he tells Dirk again: _I love you. I want you to fuck me, Dirk. I want you._

Dirk’s hand, moving hard and fast on his cock until now, stutters and clenches, and he comes with barely stifled moan. After a fortnight of self-enforced denial, his orgasm is unusually long, and he mouths Todd’s name over and over as the free-falling rush of heat crashes over him – he doesn’t dare make another sound, but he needs Todd’s name on his lips. As the heat settles, Dirk is left securely floating in the feeling with which his dream started – anchored by the thought of Todd, blissfully free of any longing or pain.

It lasts for less than a minute before reality begins to re-form itself around him. A ghost of that sickly suspended feeling is back; nauseous, over-full and dissatisfied at the same time. There’s a heavy pressure to the night air which crowds in on him, and Dirk feels small and stupid and disgusting, exposed in the pathetic emptiness of his bed. He pulls his clothes up, wiping his hand on his stomach, but he’s already starting to cry.

_Absolutely hilarious_, says a voice in his head, _being asexual, being gay, being a good friend. You can’t get anything right, can you?_

It says a lot of other things, that voice, but that’s the one that really crystallises. Everything else is just the ugliest kind of shapes and colours, feelings of shame and horror and pent-up frustration that form nothing but angry clouds in his mind. But that’s routine by now. Arousal he just can’t stop himself from giving into, guilty pleasure, a brief moment of calm, and then the shame and disgust. The robotic feeling of sitting up, standing, walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night, perfectly still and quiet while tears stream down his face.

Usual stuff, usual suspect. As always, Dirk locks the bathroom door behind him, has a moment where he has to resist the urge to just crumple down against it on the floor. Knows that indulging that particular drama only means crying longer and harder. Forces himself to walk to the sink instead and begin cleaning himself up.

The thing about this building storm, and the routine of giving into it, is that every time he does so, Dirk has a stupid, desperate hope that this time, _this time_ the storm might break. That maybe if he just fleshes out the details of his fantasy better, leans into everything he wants, gives himself a good enough orgasm – maybe that will be enough to make him hunger less for the real thing, and he’ll finally be … Maybe not ‘free,’ maybe not ‘normal again,’ but just … Okay. Maybe he can figure it all out, and learn to live with indefinite tightrope-walking. Or maybe he can fall back out of love.

Except god, no. Not that. Dirk doesn’t want that; loving Todd is wonderful. Dirk hasn’t had someone to love in so long, and loving Todd brings him the kind of comfort and joy he’s spent most of his life dreaming of – also, loving Todd feels as natural an action as breathing in and out. It’s right. Grounding. Beautiful. It’s the hunger that’s the problem – but then, if he’s completely honest, Dirk isn’t sure he wants to fall back out of that, either. Something in his gut seems to insist that the hunger, too, could be right and grounding and beautiful, if only he could find the right way to satisfy it.

Which is probably why the storm never breaks. Dirk goes into it, hoping, and comes out the other side feeling like it’s only gotten bigger and heavier, and all he’s done is make it worse. The hunger remains unsatisfied, and Dirk feels like nothing but a lustful, revolting creep; pathetic, unwanted, wrong.

He tries very, very hard not to listen to that voice that tells him he’s wrong. He tries to tell himself that he _is_ wanted, even if not in the way he would like most to be, by whom he would like most to be; that it’s not his fault that the libido he’s mostly only paid functional attention to has woken up along with the sudden arrival of his sexual feelings. He’s not bad at being asexual just because it turns out his asexuality is greyer than he thought, he’s not bad at being gay just because he feels like the stereotype of the lecherous queer lusting after their best friend. He tells himself that he can still keep his puzzle picture, the one which had made sense for so long, and that it’s alright that it turned out to not be the full thing – it’s exciting, isn’t it, that he found new puzzle pieces? That there are new experiences to enjoy, and that he wasn’t so very off the mark anyway – it’s just that apparently Todd Brotzman exists to delight and confound him. When Dirk is calmer, and less focused on not waking up his flatmates with his tears, those are truths which he can easily let back into his heart.

It’s the storm which feels continuously unbearable, even when he’s calmer, even when he’s happy. It’s the pressure of holding back indefinitely when it’s simply not in his nature to do so, especially not in regard to heights and intensities. Dirk was not born or built to be restrained, and restraining himself every day he spends with Todd is taking up more and more of his strength. He doesn’t know how much longer he can do it. He can barely even keep himself quiet when he comes; he wants to chant Todd’s name, sing it, feel it filling his lungs.

And apart from keeping quiet at night, there are other pressures, other impulses to restrain; the way he wants to grab Todd’s hand in the middle of a case or cling to it when Todd grabs his, the way he sees Todd sitting on the sofa some afternoons, plucking his guitar, and Dirk wants to tell Todd how beautiful he is. The little whims to come up behind Todd in the kitchen and wrap around him in a hug, or to throw stupid little flirtations Todd’s way just on the off-chance that they might make him smile. And yes, sometimes, when Todd is in a good mood or Dirk is just in a particularly foolish one, Dirk will allow himself to act on one of the smaller whims – but like the orgasms, they only seem to make him want more.

Dirk doesn’t know how much longer he’s going to last before he finally breaks, and Todd finds out – or Farah figures it out. That’s been another increasing pressure lately, Farah bugging Dirk about what exactly is going on, because apparently Dirk has gotten truly shit at hiding his feelings in the past fortnight. Farah is clever, and sharp-minded, and more importantly, she lives with both of them and she isn’t blind, so it’s probably only a matter of time until she either catches Dirk going completely moon-eyed over Todd’s daily guitar sessions, or she makes Dirk feel guilty enough about lying to her that he comes out with it himself.

Dirk is thinking this, and staring at his freshly-washed yet still wretched-looking face in the bathroom mirror, when he hears a floorboard creak in the hallway outside. He stiffens. He remembers that Farah’s room is next to his, and she’s typically a light sleeper, and he’s struck with a horror that exists on a higher plane of embarrassment than he’s possibly ever experienced in his life.

“_Great job, Gently_,” he thinks, “_you’ve woken up one friend by wanking over the other_.”

Part of him wants to cry again, and maybe that’s the thing which makes him crumble, because suddenly the utter misery and hopelessness he feels is too much for him bear alone. He thinks of how he felt, when he heard Farah crying back in the hotel room, how he wanted to hug her and say ‘_no, no Farah, we’re fine, we’re both fine, please don’t cry, I don’t want you to cry_.’ Or at least pet her awkwardly and ramble something to that effect. Farah has been offering her help all fortnight, and maybe Dirk has been alone for many, many years, but he isn’t alone now. He needs to share at least a little bit of this pressure with someone, and maybe feel at least a little bit less defeated by it.

It’s with this decision in mind, ready to throw himself into Farah’s arms and sob on her shoulder, that Dirk opens the bathroom door, draws a breath in – and freezes completely. It’s not Farah outside the door.

It’s Todd.

Dirk rapidly tries to redirect all bodily efforts towards looking like he hasn’t just run into the unrequited love of his life barely fifteen minutes after fantasising in detail about fucking them.

“Todd!” he says, and the moment he lets that sound out he feels a jolt of conflicting emotions, all of which mix together and turn into an awful sort of nervous chuckle. It’s a deeply idiotic sound, somewhere between ‘perturbed Santa Claus’ and ‘white woman in an infomercial.’ He has to say _something_ after that, something less profoundly strange, but all his mouth spits out is, “How … unusual! Erm – to run into you at this time of the night, in … this part of the flat!”

Oh, he’s a fucking idiot. 

After a beat, Todd says, “I do live here." And oh no, oh no, _oh no_ – his lips are doing that _thing_, the thing where his mouth perks up just a little at the edge like he’s either trying to smile or trying not to smile, and Dirk’s stomach is absolutely turning to jelly.

Dirk laughs over the butterflies, trying to force them back down with the rest of his stomach contents. “Oh, right. Er.”

Dirk looks away and focuses on not thinking about the time he imagined Todd aiming that smile down at him right when Dirk was about to wrap his own mouth around Todd’s –

Ah, unsuccessful.

Dirk feels like the raindrop again, trapped in the cloud; he’s getting the kind of truly wildly stupid urges that run along the same lines of: ‘What if I set fire to this teacloth?’ ‘What if I dropped my phone off this bridge?’ ‘What if I just kissed Todd, right here and now, just to see what would happen?’ Dirk knows the answers will probably be, in order, ‘it will be on fire,’ ‘it will break,’ and ‘Todd will never want to be near me again and will probably move out and I’ll lose my best friend and my assistant and my Todd,’ so he really has to think of something else to do.

Dirk has to do _something_ other than pin Todd against the closest wall, so he puts his hands on his hips and tries not to look at Todd at all. But he drops his eyes to Todd’s hand, which is clenched shut – and that alarms Dirk enough to glance up at Todd’s face, and see that Todd looks … off. Tense and flushed. And even though it’s absolutely not for the kinds of reasons Dirk was just imagining, Dirk is still pitched back into thoughts of Todd lying in Dirk’s bed with Dirk’s cock buried inside him, his cheeks flushed, right on the edge of coming –

Cutting between the thoughts thrusting themselves into Dirk’s mind is Todd’s voice, painfully real and normal, “Uh, well, I was just gonna …” He gestures at the bathroom behind Dirk with his unclenched hand, and Dirk starts as the side of Todd’s open palm nearly grazes his bare arm.

He pulls abruptly back from the urge to jump his best friend outside their bathroom in the middle of the night. “Right! Yeah! Of course,” he gabbles, “Sorry, I’ll – erm …” He tries to get around Todd at the same time that Todd moves forwards towards him – after a moment of awkward dancing there’s a point where they’re standing close together, even though they’re not in the confines of the doorway but in the hallway itself, and Dirk has a split second of madness wherein he thinks that Todd is about to reach for him.

But no, those things only happen in Dirk’s fantasies. In reality Todd isn’t reaching for him, Todd is just moving his hand to balance himself, and Dirk never tries to kiss him, and Todd doesn’t want him back, and soon Dirk is walking away down the hallway to his own room, alone, whispering a mumbled rush of apologies as he goes, and knowing that he has more to apologies owed to Todd than he can ever admit.

‘_I’m sorry I touched myself while thinking of you_,’ ‘_I’m sorry I’ve done it before_,’ ‘_I’m sorry I’ll probably do it again_,’ ‘_I’m sorry that I want you so badly that I don’t know what else to do_,’ ‘_I’m sorry that I fell in love with you like a complete idiot and I don’t even have the nerve to tell you_.’

Dirk closes his bedroom door, and stares at the ruffled sheets of his bed, the shadowy shapes of the strewn pillows that could almost, _almost_ look like Todd – and for a moment he imagines they are, that reality is a bad dream he had. That he got up to wash his face and now he’s coming back to their bed and any moment his Todd will roll over, all sleepy-eyed, and reach an arm out for him.

And Dirk knows, in truth, that the thing he’s really sorry for – the thing he should really apologise for – is that he doesn’t actually feel sorry at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, there's almost certainly a third part in this series.
> 
> If you enjoyed this and would like a third part, please please please leave a review or a comment below! I very much appreciate them.


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